Science in London

This book introduces the reader to the statues, busts, and memorial plaques of scientists, explorers, medicine men and women, and inventors found in the bustling capital of the United Kingdom, London. The former capital of the British Empire, London remains a world center of trade, navigation, finance and many more. It is also a hub of science, the seat of the Royal Society, Royal Institution, Science Museum, British Museum, Natural History Museum, and of great institutions of higher education. The historical figures depicted in these memorials are responsible for creating great institutions, milestone discoveries, contributions to the scientific and technological revolutions, fighting against epidemics, advancing medicine, and contributing to the progress seen during the past four hundred years. This is a guidebook for the visitor and the Londoner alike. It presents memorials that everybody is familiar with and others that the authors discovered during their years of painstaking research. The 750 images and the text, interlarded with anecdotes, is both informative and entertaining.

Magdolna Hargittai is a physical chemist and a research professor of structural chemistry at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. She is a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Academia Europaea (London). She is a PhD and DSc, and has an honorary doctorate from the University of North Carolina. In addition to her research in structural chemistry, she has been interested in the lives and careers of women scientists and has lectured and published a monograph, Women Scientists, about this topic. She and her husband, Istvan, have joinly worked and published extensively on symmetry, science history, conversations with famous scientists, and, lately, the memorials of scientists in great cities. Her books have appeared in English, Hungarian, Russian, German, Swedish, and Korean. The Hargittais live in Budapest. Their son is a professor of chemistry in the United States and their daughter is a professor of communication studies in Switzerland.